El Salvador's Role As a US Strategic and Tactical Laboratory

De Raíz Diversa vol. 4, núm. 7, enero-junio, pp. 159-183, 2017 Innovations in Intervention: El Salvador’s Role as a U.S. Strategic and Tactical Laboratory Matthew James Hone*1 Abstract: The United States, amongst other motives, utilized their intervention into El Salvador as a laboratory for strategic, tactical and technological military techniques. The extent of the experimentation has not been fully divulged due to the continued classification of documentation and the secretive nature of U.S. special operations. However, there is sufficient evidence available to reveal that the U.S. participation in El Salvador initiated or expanded on a number of practices that would be incorporated well after the conflict. Keywords: militarism, intervention, Central America, El Salvador, war. Resumen: Estados Unidos utilizó su intervención en El Salvador, entre otros movitos, como un laboratorio de técnicas militares estratégicas, tácticas y tec- nológicas. El alcance de esta experimentación no ha sido divulgado en su to- talidad, debido a que la documentación, en su mayoría, aún se encuentra cla- sificada y por la naturaleza secreta de las operaciones especiales de los Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, hay suficiente evidencia disponible para revelar que la participación de EE.UU. en El Salvador da inicio o expande una serie de prácti- cas que se han incorporado en conflictos posteriores a la guerra en El Salvador. Palabras clave: militarismo, intervención, América Central, El Salvador, guerra. Recibido: 08 de agosto de 2016. Aceptado: 02 de octubre de 2016 The Theory of Military Innovation and El Salvador A n essential component that measures a particular military force’s ca- pability and potential is the capacity for innovation. This variable generally determines whether a force can cope with the ev- er-changing strategic and operational problems facing it, while simultaneously being able to develop solutions to stay one step ahead of its potential adversaries. Innovation is a multidimensional phenomenon. At one level, it may refer to the ability to develop new warfighting concepts. At another level, it may refer to the ability to develop new integrative capacities: * Doctor en Estudios Latinoamericanos, unam <[email protected]> 159 160 Hone.- Innovations in Intervention: El Salvador’s Role as a U.S. Strategic and Tactical Laboratory reorganized command structures, better doctrine and tactics, improved logistics, new training techniques, and the like (Tillis, 2000: 155). Moreover, innovation refers to the development of new technologies for military operations. Irrespective of the innovation being discussed, the creative capacity of a given military force is crucial to maximizing both military equipment and manpower. “The analytical challenge from the per- spective of measuring national power, then, consists of identifying those factors which might facilitate a high capacity for innovation within a given military force and, subsequently, translating these factors into indicators that could be tracked by the intelligence community” (Tillis, 2000: 155). An interesting and often overlooked aspect regarding the United States involvement in El Salvador during the civil conflict revolves around strategic and tactical experimentation in the theater of combat operations. There were a plethora of innovative programs expounded on or initiated in El Salvador that would influence subsequent U.S. interventions. Ulti- mately, what this article seeks to analyze is the specific manner in which the United States utilized their participation in the Salvadoran conflict as a combat laboratory from a strategic and tactical sense and how this particular aspect of U.S. innovation has influenced subsequent military operations? Classification Restrictions and Research One of the principal dilemmas confronting any investigation regarding U.S. military innovation is the classification of pertinent documents related to operations. Although the U.S. involvement in the Salvadoran conflict terminated over 25 years ago, there are pieces of substantial information regarding the intervention still veiled in secrecy. Approximately 10 percent of the documentation pertinent to the U.S. involvement in El Salvador are redacted with another 6 percent or around 600 documents still classified and not disclosed to the public. Finally, and most relevant for this particular research, there is very little information concerning the actions of U.S. military and intelligence officers during operations in El Salvador itself. According to the declassified assessment on El Salvador conducted by Margaret Swedish, co-founder of the Religious Task Force of Central America, Robert H. White, former U.S. Ambassador to El Sal- vador, Cynthia Arson, human rights activist and Fr. William Callahan of the Quixote Center: 161 De Raíz Diversa, vol. 4, núm. 7, enero-junio, pp. 159-183, 2017 We see very little, for example, about the role of the U.S. military advisers. People believe we had advisers in each of the garrisons and that there was a much more direct role being played by them in actually carrying out the war -- I mean strategically planning with the Salvadoran army. Some of the military personnel down there, I’m sure, were part of the intelligence agen- cies. This says little about the cia role. That is a huge hole. We also have not seen much from the fbi and how they linked some of their domestic surveillance here with the El Salvador foreign policy (Jones, 2011: 1). Despite the obvious obstructions, materials emanating from open or unclassified sources and testimonies have provided a window into U.S. military innovation during the Salvadoran intervention. Innovation and a response to Vietnam According to the renowned maxim by Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of policy by other means.” This emphasizes that political objectives shape the conduct of war; and when political objectives are limited as in the case of El Salvador, then the conduct of war too, is normally limited. However, these very limitations have impelled the demand for military innovation and experimentation since conventional tactics were either unavailable or would prove to be less effective. The Cold War setting that would domi- nate the Salvadoran civil conflict coupled with the divisive post Vietnam policies spawned an environment conducive to U.S. strategic and tactical variation that continues to advance the U.S. military agenda to this day. Organizations that have recently experienced major failure are likely to be stimulated into innovation. The U.S. military emerging from the disastrous Vietnam intervention was forced in part to re-invent itself in El Salvador. One of the direct consequences from the U.S. engagement in Vietnam was the capping of the U.S military advisor limit to 55 in order to prevent the political backlash of mass U.S. military casualties in combat. In the case of El Salvador, this particular restriction proved to be beneficial. According to Major P. Cale: “The 55-man limit may have been the best thing that happened to the esaf during the 1980s. The limited number of advisors forced the Sal- vadoran armed forces to accomplish the military mission on the ground after the American advisors had trained them” (Cale, 1996: 14). The U.S. did apply a number of promising strategic aspects left over from Vietnam and incorporated them in their Central American cam- paigns, none more important than the “Vietnamization” of El Salvador, or 162 Hone.- Innovations in Intervention: El Salvador’s Role as a U.S. Strategic and Tactical Laboratory the mass training of indigenous forces. By 1986, the El Salvadoran armed forces numbered over 50,000 and would eventually surpass 60,000 by war’s end. Simultaneously, the number of Salvadoran military personnel that had been trained by U.S. trainers had risen exponentially. According to a cia declassified document in 1986: “Based on U.S. Military statis- tics, well over 20,000 Salvadoran soldiers, including some 1,400 junior officers and cadets, have received U.S. training either in El Salvador, Honduras, Panama or the United States”(CIA, 1986: 2492). This number would continue to increment as the war carried over into the early 1990s, but on a much more manageable scale than what occurred in Vietnam. According to writer and ex U.S official in El Salvador, Todd Greentree, during the course of an interview: “The direct participation of the U.S. elements in the training and equipping of the Salvadoran armed forces was extremely important. The dynamic of the war that led to negotiations resulted from the attrition of fmln forces under the effect of sustained esaf counter-guerrilla operations, combined with reduction in support from Nicaragua after 1990” (Greentree, 2014). In light of the Vietnam experience, the principal document that ex- pressed the U.S. counterinsurgent plan and the development of the Sal- vadoran armed forces was the Woerner Report. The Woerner Report or the Report of the El Salvador Military Assistance Team was jointly drafted by Salvadoran and American officers in the fall of 1981. The report was developed over an eight-week period and it outlined the U.S. strategy to train, equip and organize the Salvadoran armed forces. The U.S. practical- ly quadrupled the Salvadoran armed forces over the course of the war and according to Major Thomas Erik Miller: “The strategy promulgated by the Woerner report was strongly accepted by the esaf (El Salvador Armed Forces), which viewed it with ownership. The El Salvadorans often credit this strategy for their survival from 1981 to 1985” (Miller, 2003: 53) Interestingly, the Woerner Report consisted of two separate documents. First a national strategy for El Salvador was produced in coordination with the Estado Mayor, which was written in Spanish and remained a classified Salvadoran document. Secondly, a classified report, which ran several hundred pages, broke the strategy down into two dimensions, preparation for war and conduct of the war. This report was for the U.S. government and never given to the goes (Government of El Salvador) or esaf (El Sal- vador Armed Forces) (Miller, 2003: 53).

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